Sacked six times yesterday, Kerry Collins naturally felt quite a bit of pain in the Giants’ ugly 24-7 loss. But the offensive linemen charged with protecting him insisted they felt just as bad.

“Our job is to make sure [Collins] doesn’t get hit,” said center Chris Bober. “So when you see him picking himself up off his back so much, it’s awful.”

Bober’s feelings were similar to those of the rest of the Giants’ offensive line, which suffered through its worst performance of the year. After spending the afternoon watching Buffalo defenders rush past them into the backfield, they were well aware of their woeful performance.

While they did admit that their relative youth didn’t help, they said that wasn’t enough to excuse their struggle.

The line, which was makeshift this season to begin with, was even more depleted than usual in yesterday’s loss. Luke Petitgout was out with a bad back and Wayne Lucier – a new starter – was knocked out in the second quarter with a strained knee. Scott Peters was called up from the practice squad, while Lucier, David Diehl and Jeff Roehl are rookies.

All of the new faces have taken a toll on the offense and that was never more evident than yesterday. Roehl stepped in for the injured Petitgout in just his second start of his career and was overmatched by Aaron Schobel, who had three sacks.

“I didn’t do what I’m supposed to do,” Roehl said. “I thought I was ready to play and I knew my assignments, even though it didn’t look like it.”

Roehl seemed clearly upset with what he had done and said the memory would stick with him.

“This is one of the worst days of my life,” Roehl said. “We couldn’t do anything right and I know I’m a big part of it.”

He was hardly alone, a fact that Buffalo head coach Gregg Williams expected and planned on taking advantage of.

“We saw our line against their line as the thing we could do the most damage with,” Williams said. “So we wanted to throw a lot of different things at them so we would be able to exploit that.”

Bober saw first hand the effectiveness of that strategy.

“Guys were flying all over the place,” Bober said. “It seemed like they were coming from everywhere.”

Don’t expect it to get better any time soon, with injuries befalling the line seemingly every week.

“They say in college that seniors win championships,” Bober said. “In the NFL, veterans win and you can look around and see we don’t have any.”